Where there’s smoke

Dr. Erik Steele’s column (BDN, March 9) in support of passing LD 1349, the restaurant smoking ban, is so well thought out that that alone should be enough to have this overdue law enacted. It is laughable that some people who claim to be restaurateurs say their businesses will be threatened if they can’t maintain a health menace, toxic smokers’ pollution, in them. Why would anyone not want to eat in the cleanest, most sanitary surroundings?

There is no safe level of exposure to smokers’ pollution. People feel immediate discomfort on contact, and progressively suffer all kinds of ailments ranging from headaches to dizziness, asthma and occasionally anaphylactic shock and unconsciousness. Try telling those people there is no evidence smokers’ pollution harms anyone, or their senses are flawed. Ray Perkins Jr. Waldoboro

If LD 1349, An Act to Protect Citizens from the Detrimental Effects of Tobacco, passes, it will be the end of an era and another freedom gone. I don’t trust the surveys by the Partnership for a Tobacco Free Maine. I suspect they tend to come up with the numbers to suit themselves, such as the 90 percent of 1,057 people polled who said they wouldn’t mind the total ban on smoking in restaurants.

Restaurant owners are honest, hard-working, taxpaying people; their business depends on the public. Many people choose to smoke. Should the freedom of this state be governed by the fanatics? Shirley Potter Mattawamkeag